La Vie en France: London Town

Last weekend I took a few days off work and went to London. Thibaut wanted to go there because he used to live there, and I'm pretty sure he's getting sick of hearing my American accent everyday and needed some British english in his life. We took the chunnel over on Friday to hang out with some Brits for the weekend. It was so nice to be able to speak ENGLISH everywhere! People actually understood my language (kinda)! I had to be careful though, since I have picked up the bad habit of talking about people when they're right in front of me, always assuming that they don't understand English. For example, I started talking about a weird smelly guy in the subway, and soon after was reminded that he COULD understand every word I was saying. Oops. I need to learn to shut my mouth. Also it was amazing that Thibaut could understand British people better than me.. I am a native English speaker and can't even understand my own language. Sometimes I swear they are just making weird sounds to mess with me. It's actually hard not to laugh sometimes.

We spent three nights there, we had a nice hotel in the city center with a buffet breakfast everyday! Sausage, bacon and eggs. Yes please! This doesn't happen in Franceland.. and when it does it's just not the same. We lucked out with the weather too, since usually it is raining all the time in London. It only rained one day that we were there. Friday night when we arrived we went out to a club, that had different indie rock bands playing. It was a huge concert hall in an old theater that they took the seats out of. It's so funny because everyone there looks so stereotypically british! It's such a change from France. All the girls in France always look perfectly dressed and put together, and in London they wear almost no clothes, and get so sloppily drunk. Being out in London was worse than being in Athens, Ohio on a Saturday night. These girls are serious lushes! It was amazing people watching anyway. Watching drunk people go from fighting to crying to hugging is always good entertainment. Oh and a twelve year old asked me to open his beer for him in the street. I of course asked him to hold my beer, and opened his with my lighter while lecturing him that he should not be drinking and smoking at such a young age. As I left he said "thanks a lot MOM (or as the brits say 'mum')." I think I'm getting old.

As for the touristy stuff, we did a lot, but kind of took our time. We went to the Natural History Museum, which was my favorite. They had a really cool dinosaur exhibit and lots of naturey stuff, like rooms about trees, the human body, and other random things. My favorite thing was a real moving T-Rex that was made to look like the real thing. I know I'm like a 10 year old boy, but it was really cool! It was like I was in Jurassic Park. T-Rex's little arms kinda creeped me out though. We also went to the British Museum, which has artifacts from every continent and every era. It is so huge I could never have seen it all! My favorite was the Egyptian rooms, which had all the embalmed mummies and stuff that they took out of the pyramids. We also saw the necessary London sights, like Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, the Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace, the parks, and the London Eye (the biggest ferris wheel in the world).

After visiting London three times, I still don't feel like I've made a dent in that city. There's so much to see! Another plus about England is that they have a lot of different brands than they don't sell in France. For example they have Vitamin Water, my favorite, which is not available in France! They also sell US weekly in stores.. I almost cried I was so happy! I miss the clean streets of London and the friendly English speakers already, I think I need to go back sometime soon :)

T-Rex! look at his teeny weeny arms..